Javier Bardem

Darren Aronofsky doesn't make fluffy movies, and has only had one genuine misfire (2014's Noah). His best films are unforgiving explorations of artistic ambition (Black Swan), addiction (Requiem for a Dream) or mortality (The Wrestler), admittedly big themes. But this bonkers family horror movie perhaps has more in common with his ambitious existential sci-fi epic The Fountain: this is a resolutely symbolic movie that's impossible to take literally. And yet it still freaks us out.

It's set in a huge isolated house, which a young woman (Jennifer Lawrence) has been restoring for her older poet husband (Javier Bardem) after it burned down. Just as it's beginning to look good, and she starts thinking about starting a family, the husband invites a stranger (Ed Harris) to stay, and he encroaches on their hospitality by inviting his pushy wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) and their bickering sons (real-life brothers Domhnall and Brian Gleeson). After causing some chaos, they finally leave, the wife falls pregnant and the husband's writers' block finally breaks. But his new book inspires so much adulation from his fans that their happiness is in jeopardy.

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Subtitled Salazar's Revenge in the UK, this fifth film in the long-running series never quite gets its sea legs. With a waterlogged script and a startlingly murky production design, this is the first movie in the franchise that lacks a sense of swashbuckling merriment. It's lively enough to keep the audience watching, but it never quite makes any sense because any sensible details are lost amid the chaotic action sequences.

It opens with Henry (Brenton Thwaites), son of franchise veterans Will and Elizabeth (Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley in cameos), who is on a quest to free his father from his watery imprisonment. For this he needs Poseidon's trident, which only Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) can find with his magical compass. Except that Jack has swapped the compass to buy some whiskey. Then Will meets the feisty Carina (Kaya Scodelario), who's star-reading skills will come in handy. But the vengeful Salazar (Javier Bardem) is also after the compass and the trident, hoping to reverse his own ghostly curse. And as things heat up, Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) dives into the pursuit as well.

What follows is a series of set-pieces in which these various factions scuffle for control of people and artefacts that can lead them in their quests for power. They all talk incessantly about the elaborately complex mythology, but it never makes any sense why each person knows only fragments of the lore. And it's also not easy to hear what they're shouting amid the general chaos of yet another epically choreographed fight scene. Thankfully, the actors are hammy enough to stand out from the sea of digital effects that fill the screen.

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While Sean Penn lends this thriller some political subtext, the fact remains that it's actually just another vacuous revenge fantasy from Taken director Pierre Morel. Clearly for Morel, the violence is the point, and any depth of meaning is irrelevant, which leaves the film superficially entertaining but a waste of the considerable talent on-screen.

Penn plays Jim, a charity worker in the wartorn 2006 Democratic Republic of Congo. His hot doctor girlfriend Annie (Jasmine Trinca) has no idea that Jim is secretly a black-ops sniper working with fellow mercenary commandos Cox, Felix and DuPont (Rylance, Bardem and Elba). Then their latest mission requires Jim to disappear. Eight years later in an all-new life, Jim discovers that someone is trying to kill him, so he travels to London to find Cox. When Jim's pursuers turn up, Cox sends him to talk to Felix, who now lives in Barcelona with Annie as his wife. With the mysterious killers still on his trail, Jim heads to Gibraltar to tie up the loose ends with DuPont, and finally discovers the truth about what's going on and who's behind it.

Yes, everything is leading to a brutal confrontation inventively set in a bull-fighting ring. But not much else here is either original or convincing. The whole African politics premise is little more than a plot device, while hopping from Congo to Britain to Spain does little more than change the background scenery. Otherwise, the script is so simplistic that it barely holds water, and each ambush, fight and chase sequence feels like something we've seen before. Especially since everything is both over-choreographed and gratuitously grisly. Still, Morel is great at creating a sense of tension that builds ominously from start to finish, adding some gritty urgency through corrupt politicians and self-serving businessmen. Unfortunately, the film continually sidelines these intriguing ideas for more mindlessly violent mayhem.

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